Category Archives: Houston quilt show

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Outlining the shapes with hand embroidery on this little quilt added so much to the liveliness of the design. Here are a few other ways to outline the shapes in your next fused art quilt.

Add a Blanket Stitch to trim out shapes like this turquoise batik fabric above. Whip stitch another color of thread through the base of the Blanket Stitch to get a rope-like look. The Back Stitch gives a nice dashed line around shapes like the Size 8 Oranges pearl cotton thread on the green batik fabric.

Another way to neatly finish an edge like the sun in the Windy City #5 design is with the Spiky Chain Stitch. It’s sort of a combination of the Chain and Blanket Stitches. Here you see it in orange around the circle. The Fly Stitch adds sharp points to the sun and French Knots add punctuation marks to the points.

(See Windy City #5 and other small art works for sale at the Artfabrik booth #1314 at the International Quilt Festival in Houston this week.)

It’s been a lot of fun adding hand embroidery to outline shapes on this little quilt, Windy City #5. You can see it in person at the Artfabrik booth #1314 at the International Quilt Festival in Houston this week. Here are few of the stitch details for those of you who can’t attend the show.

The roof of the house is outlined with two sets of Blanket Stitches, one an “innie” and one an “outie”. The blue Blanket Stitches tipped with green French Knots are made with a Size 8 Aquamarine pearl cotton thread. Along the side of the house is the trusty Blanket Stitch as well as the Back Stitch in that same Aquamarine thread.

The Chain Stitch outlines the roof of the er…um… outhouse and the tree. Adding the simple Running Stitch next to the tree shape helps repeat that same Aquamarine color used elsewhere. And the pinked fabric edge of the field is finished with the Fly Stitch.French Knots fill in the divots.

It’s always a thrill to see finished art work created by one of my students. This fun little village was made by Annie who attended my class at the International Quilt Festival in Houston. Can you guess why her delightful quilt is called “There’s Always One”?

See the fish swimming counter to the others? That’s Annie. She’s always thinking outside of the box and that is why her art work is so fun. Thanks for sharing your work with us Annie!